Something I Can Do
by kurzon
Summary: Follows manga chap 384, focusing on Sakura's story in the aftermath of the Uchiha brothers' fight. Primarily Sakura action and character development, revolves around Team 7, with SasuSaku and minor NaruHina.
1. Mask of a Clown

Disclaimer: Naruto is the property of Kishimoto Masashi.

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1. Mask of a Clown 

As Yamato-taichou gave the order to attack, Sakura cast a quick glance at Naruto, knowing that he above them all needed to keep his temper. But his face was still calm, brilliant blue eyes steady and determined. It eased her own anger: this time nothing would stop them from reaching Sasuke-kun.

The branch the Akatsuki was standing on began to distort, and the familiar chirring of Kakashi-sensei's chidori almost drowned Hinata's murmured, "Byakugan!" Sakura moved to guard her as Naruto created another half-dozen shadow clones and charged. As Yamato-taichou's jutsu closed in a wooden fist around the black-robed man, Kakashi-sensei thrust chidori through the branch-like fingers and Naruto matched him with a rasengan from the opposite direction.

"Is it tag? Who wants to be It?"

The Akatsuki had moved, was behind them! Sakura pivoted, snapping off a kunai, while a stream of ink spiders flowed from the scroll Sai had unfurled. Akamaru leapt upward to one of the massive leaning tree trunks, gracefully avoiding the black and red blur. "His scent is wrong. A genjutsu?" Kiba called.

"He –" Hinata was shaking her head disbelieving. "I've never seen anything like-"

"Tag!"

Too swift to follow, the Akatsuki bounced behind Hinata's small form. Sakura didn't see his strike, only heard the soft gasp of pain, the distinctive crunch of breaking bone. She was impressed that, even as the force of the blow thrust her forward, Hinata spun, kicking out, her foot passing through the enemy's mid-section.

It hadn't been a trick of the eye – the Akatsuki must be using a jutsu which made him incorporeal. As both Shino and one of Naruto's shadow clones intercepted Hinata, Sakura found herself face-to-face with the man's swirling orange mask. With only a moment to react, she dodged down, not attempting to attack, but reaching out one of her hands to pass through black cloth and whatever lay beneath, attempting the simplest of medical diagnostics.

The ground sank beneath her. Caught off-guard, Sakura leapt awkwardly for the edge of a rapidly-growing pit, but the sides were slippery, and she sank into mud. Genjutsu! It had to be, though one of the most intense she'd ever experienced. The weight of the mud dragging her under, the rotting stench of it, the chill and slickness, all so very hard to disbelieve. Mustering all her will, she worked to disrupt the flow of chakra around her, spitting foul-tasting earth to gasp out the release command.

"-down!" Something exploded, and Sakura twisted in leafy mulch as wooden fragments were sprayed in every direction. She re-oriented herself as she moved and spotted Hinata lying back by the water's edge, the shadow clone who had been shielding her from the splintered rain vanishing into smoke.

Plucking at a fragment which had lodged in the meat of her thigh, Sakura dashed to Hinata's side. A glance showed her the Akatsuki back in the trees, hooting and shouting "Hide and Seek! Hide and Seek!" as he leapt from branch to branch, a swarm of Shino's insects trailing close behind. He was playing with them.

"Naruto..." she murmured, seeing the expression on her friend's face, but then resolutely turned back to Hinata. The Akatsuki had hit her hard, leaving a badly broken collar bone and considerable tissue damage. It wasn't the kind of thing Sakura could heal quickly, but she could set the bone in place and lessen Hinata's pain.

Above, the Akatsuki was shrieking and shouting unconvincingly as Shino's insects engulfed him. Despite the concentration needed for healing, Sakura was able to make out Kakashi-sensei's cautious orders, and a lull in the noise prompted her to look up in time to see the insects fall away, leaving nothing behind.

"Bastard! Stop hiding!" Naruto shouted. Sakura looked up at him worriedly, then choked as she was wrenched her off her knees by someone grabbing the back of her shirt.

"Sakura-san!" Hinata snatched at her hand, and gasped as their fingers intersected and passed through each other.

The Akatsuki began rapidly sinking, taking Sakura down with him. Pulled up against heavy cloth smelling of old blood, Sakura twisted for a frantic moment, then began focusing chakra into her fist. However this phasing jutsu worked, if he had made her intangible as well, he'd find that Tsunade-sama's apprentice was not the easy target he'd obviously expected.

"That's a good way to kill yourself," the Akatsuki said softly, his voice losing all aspect of fool and gaining a thousand degrees of menace.

As they dropped below the forest floor into darkness, Sakura froze, then carefully released the chakra she'd started building. He was right. However this jutsu worked, if she interrupted it while she wasn't fully on the surface, the consequences could be deadly. It was totally black around them, but she could sense a downward motion.

"Besides," he continued, cool and self-satisfied. "You'll be thanking me in a moment. I'm giving you what you want."

"What do you know of what I want, you bastard?" Sakura asked, furious to be helpless yet again. No matter how strong she grew, she was always too far behind. They'd been so close to Sasuke, and now-

"I think I can make an educated guess," said the Akatsuki, as they broke through into a lighted chamber below, and dropped lightly to the ground.

Sakura, released abruptly onto a slick, wet floor, stared around her in disbelief. Some kind of throne room, old and abandoned, walls scarred from recent battle, the air still acrid with smoke. A man was propped against the lowest step before the throne, badly wounded but immediately recognisable. She would never forget those eyes, cold and dead no matter how steadily his heart beat. Uchiha Itachi.

Dread swelled to block her throat, and a shudder ran through her so strongly she saw spots before her eyes. And then she looked down. At the slowly spreading pool of blood. At the shape of him, so familiar for all the differences three years had made. At long lashes which dipped wearily then lifted from black eyes fixed not on her but on the one so central to his existence.

"S-sasuke-kun..."


	2. Beyond Itachi

2. Beyond Itachi 

Shock turned her bones to jelly, but Sakura didn't allow herself more than a shuddering gasp before going to her knees beside Sasuke. Supported by one elbow and facing toward the throne, he seemed not to notice when she pressed her hands against his back, though it did little for her concentration to think of the fact of touching him, of the sensation of fever-hot skin beneath her palms. The medical jutsu confirmed what her eyes had already told her: most of the injuries were minor, but a clean wound just below the ribcage had pierced his lung and an artery was severed in his right arm: not life-threatening in itself, but the loss of blood would soon be critical.

Without pause she set to stopping that flow, and sealing the sucking wound in his abdomen. The partially collapsed lung was a less immediate concern than preventing more liquid from filling it – the perennial mednin's problem of too much blood where it shouldn't be, and not enough where you wanted it.

"Why?"

It was Uchiha Itachi who had spoken, his empty voice barely raising above a whisper. Sakura's first thought had been that the question was directed to his fellow Akatsuki, but it was Sasuke who answered, the words bringing a bubble of blood to his lips.

"My revenge. Not your suicide."

The quiet calm of his words belied the storm of fury that came with them. If anyone ventured between the two brothers, Sakura swore they would wither and die from hatred alone. Uchiha Itachi didn't even blink.

"I was not holding back."

"No. But there was welcome in your eyes at my final blow. And you tried to turn your own, when I abandoned mine." The very air could scorch before Sasuke's gaze. "Just whose capacity have you been testing, O-nii-san?"

Sasuke began to cough, red spattering one of the few remaining clean sections of his loose white robe, and Sakura hastily switched to clearing the blood from his lungs before he drowned or they collapsed altogether.

"Neither hawk, nor snake," said the other Akatsuki, standing almost forgotten to one side, and laughed. The sound was without heart or any promise of joy.

Sakura nearly lost the growing globe of blood she had balanced in mid-air as Sasuke jerked, then surged unsteadily to his feet, facing the masked man. "And where do you stand in this?"

"Why, two feet to the right of ya," the Akatsuki replied, abruptly reverting to the stance and voice of a fool. He glanced down, and with a flip of his foot kicked a discarded sword up so he could catch the handle.

Sakura felt the surge of chakra as Sasuke responded to the possibility of attack, but kept cleansing the blood she'd extracted. He desperately needed a transfusion, and her blood was the wrong type. The blood which had been filling the cavity of his collapsed lung hadn't begun to clot, and she should be able to return at least part of it to him – if this monstrous lunatic hadn't brought her here just so he could kill Sasuke twice...

"It wasn't my hand that brought down your clan," said the Akatsuki, reversing the sword and offering it hilt-first to Sasuke. "Finish this."

"I'm already finished," Sasuke replied, ignoring the sword. "He is of no interest to me now."

Gritting her teeth, Sakura pressed the globe of blood against Sasuke's back, funnelling it in a carefully controlled stream into the largest of the veins leading to his heart. She stole a quick glance toward the throne, to the blank-eyed man who had become inexplicably irrelevant. Although she had no idea why Sasuke suddenly didn't want to kill his brother, she was all too familiar with how he reacted to being pushed. Explanations would not happen unless she did everything she could to make sure he lived through this. The collapsed lung was responding well now the cavity was clear of fluid, and though he still badly needed a transfusion, he was no longer bordering on collapse. She switched to working on sealing off any remnant of internal bleeding just as a distant explosion, and what sounded like rushing water reminded her that there was a world outside this room.

"Kisame-san is enjoying himself too much," the masked Akatsuki commented, his voice flat. "Now, Sasuke-kun, take the sword. Or has all you have lived for been a lie? Do you truly intend to falter at the final step?"

"If you want that sword through anyone's throat, put it there yourself."

Sasuke's voice was coldly absolute, and his muscles did not even jump beneath Sakura's hands as the Akatsuki tilted the weapon, then suddenly and violently threw it aside. His pulse even slowed a little as he gathered himself.

"Tedious child."

The man's hand lifted, but again the outside world intruded: a single voice roared from a thousand throats, the words made barely recognisable by stone and distance.

"SSAAAaakkkkUURRRRRaaaaaahhhh!! SSSSAaaaahhHHHaaSSSSSkkkkkeeeee! Iiiiaahhhmmmm cooooooommmmminnnnnggg!!!!!"

Sakura bit back a sobbing laugh, and then swallowed the sound as Sasuke let out his breath in a way which was so familiar, and she thought had been eternally lost to them. That tiny exasperated exhalation which held nothing of the festering hatred which had stolen him away, and brought back halcyon days where the noise had become her signal to steal a glance at him, to try and catch the hint of a smile which would sometimes follow.

He drew breath, but before he could speak the Akatsuki finished the motion Naruto's cry had interrupted, and removed his mask.


	3. Right Up Until

3. Right Up Until You Hit the Sidewalk 

It was a damaged, broken face. The left side, though missing an eye, was relatively intact, the features unremarkable beneath spiky black hair. But the right sagged in a way that revealed nerve damage, and there was a blurriness, a crumpled misshapen aspect to the underlying bone structure – it almost looked like the frontal lobe had been caved in. Blazing from beneath that drooping brow was the thing which made the face which framed it irrelevant. Blood red, with black tomoe slowly revolving. Sharingan.

"Eyes down."

The words, barely audible, were the first indication Sasuke had given that he wasn't wholly oblivious to her presence. Not very complimentary, since the warning assumed she didn't know the basics of fighting a sharingan user, but still it eased one of the tight bands which had long been crushing her heart. All that crap about killing Naruto on a whim, about how they didn't matter to him anymore, yet he was already falling back into his old habit of shielding her. Sakura bowed her head and redoubled her frantic pace of healing, even as every muscle in Sasuke's body tensed with strain.

Combat between two sharingan users would not make good viewing for a chuunin exam. Whether the two were battling with genjutsu, or simply trying to use the sharingan to somehow dominate each other, neither lifted a finger in visible attack. But power poured off them in ever-increasing waves, the air growing thick and stifling, bruised by the sheer weight of intent. Sasuke's breath was coming in short, sharp gasps, sweat dripping as he stared down an invisible mountain. But it was a losing battle, impossible for one already exhausted, whose heart was under strain from lack of blood and the shock of injuries. It was his body which failed him, not his will.

Sakura cried out as Sasuke went to one knee. She braced herself against his back, the flare of the curse seal across his skin reminding her painfully of that time in the Forest of Death, and poured her energy into staving off total system shutdown, searching her mind frantically for something she could do, some jutsu effective against a man who could not be struck, some way to make the attack while continuing to sustain Sasuke's faltering life. The air in front of them had gone streaky, and though Sakura was trying not to look, she could not help but see shapes within the haze, a writhing whiteness as if a thousand thick tentacles were reaching out from the Akatsuki to surround, to engulf Sasuke. With each breath Sasuke took, they were inching closer.

The tiniest movement, caught from the corner of her eye. Uchiha Itachi, that statue of a man, had dropped his hand from his knee to the ground beside him. It was such a minor thing, unremarkable, useless, if not for the fact that it was unnecessary. Had this genius ninja, monster, murderer, ever wasted a single motion in his life?

The floor. Down. Of course, down. Tightening her left arm as firmly as possible around Sasuke's waist, Sakura bit her lip from effort. Two difficult jutsus, when it had been a strain to maintain just the healing. But she had to. There was no choice, no acceptable failure, where Sasuke's life was concerned. Still healing him, she lifted her right hand, channelled chakra she could ill afford to spare, and slammed down her fist.

The floor shattered.

Falling was easy. They were gone in a moment, out of sight, out of the reach of the coils of force and dread which had been threatening Sasuke. Keeping hold of him, shielding him from rubble, trying to continue to heal him while plunging into darkness, that was beyond even determination built during three years of silent vows and longing. A stone's glancing blow sent fireworks sparking at the back of her eyes, something else ripped Sasuke loose from her hold. Then an invisible floor rose up and smashed even thought away.


	4. Breathe For Me

Breathe for Me 

By the time Sakura was able to fit two synapses together, stone had stopped falling, but dust still filtered gently down. She couldn't have lost more than a few moments, not even a minute, surely. The hole in the ceiling formed a jagged sun, though her eyes had not adjusted enough for her to see more than the grey shapes of fallen stone.

She tried to say his name, but her throat closed. Panic, sickening, overwhelmed the chorus of pain from hip and elbow and knee, and she tore her fingernails scrabbling through fallen rock until she found a foot, a leg.

"Sasuke-kun?"

She already knew, had known even before she touched him. A buzzing sound filled her mind, and she started to shake, felt a rising howl trying to escape from the pit of her stomach.

And held it back. No. She would not have this. She refused to have come so far only to see him die. The pain always lurking behind Tsunade-sama's eyes would not be hers.

Swiftly, hampered by a leg which would not obey her, Sakura hauled herself to Sasuke's side, diagnosing as she went. A break to one arm and a lot of bruising to add to his injury count, but it had been the blood loss and the incredible strain on his system which had stopped his heart.

Starting his heart would be relatively easy, and she didn't even need chakra to force air into his lungs, but it would not be enough. She was the only mednin on the team, and her chakra reserve was limited and already depleted. Sasuke's autonomic system was shutting down, and his body did not have enough energy to recover. The kind of sustained output needed to keep him alive was beyond her strength.

The jutsu she was going to use was her own invention. She'd begun exploring the idea a year ago, after working with Shikamaru-kun, and perfected it only after the Sand's Kazekage had been so nearly lost. Tsunade-sama had immediately forbidden her from using it, but Sakura didn't even spare a thought for that stern lecture, forming the seals without hesitation.

The chakra required was minimal, the result immediate. As a lead weight settled on Sakura's entire body, Sasuke's chest began to move.

"Your hearts are beating at exactly the same pace?"

Gasping, Sakura grabbed a kunai and whirled, only to have the world spin and her vision haze out completely. This was one of the reasons Tsunade-sama had forbidden the technique – she would have practically no chance of defending herself while she maintained it.

The person who'd spoken came slowly forward, moving into the light from the room above. He was one of the tallest people she'd ever seen, with a shock of yellow-orange hair adding another couple of inches. But he wasn't carrying a weapon, or wearing an Akatsuki cloak, so she lowered the kunai.

"The breathing too," the man said, staying cautiously where he was. "What did you do to him?"

Sakura almost laughed, but watching Sasuke's chest move in time with hers, she decided it wasn't necessarily an unfitting question. People had been doing to Sasuke all his life – shaping and moulding him. Uchiha Itachi. Orochimaru. The masked Akatsuki. And now she was forcing him to live, because she couldn't bear for him to die.

"I call it the Life Bind Jutsu," she said slowly, finding speech heavy work. "My heart will beat for him until his can beat on its own. My lungs draw breath into his, until he remembers how to breathe."

And she would have nightmares all the while about oxygen starvation and brain damage and the reasons Tsunade-sama had said this kind of jutsu was a bad idea. No. No. She had reached him in time, had only been stunned by the fall, had not reduced Sasuke to a living corpse.

The tall man looked up at the hole in the ceiling, and Sakura shifted so she could keep an eye on him while she examined Sasuke's broken arm, securing it against his chest until she could find something suitable to splint it. Any chakra-based healing wasn't safe: her Life Bind Jutsu put a huge strain on her own heart, and doing anything energetic put her at risk of passing out.

The man picked his way over the rubble and squatted to his heels opposite from her, looking down at Sasuke with a calm curiosity. "So he lost?"

If only she knew. "Not to his brother. I think. He chose not to kill Itachi."

"That's surprising. He was very determined." The man looked up at her. "My name is Juugo."

"Sakura."

He nodded, then carefully eased an arm under Sasuke's shoulders and lifted him. For a moment Sakura wanted to protest, but she felt no threat from this man. He had gentle eyes, and waited courteously while she struggled painfully to her feet.

"Tell me where he needs to go," he said.


	5. Mine

5. Mine 

Walking was a nightmare. Between the bruises from the fall, and the sensation of breathing treacle, Sakura could barely keep pace with Juugo's easy tread. Fortunately, they were only a short corridor away from daylight, and emerged near the lower levels of some kind of temple, high on a forested hill. A massive water-jutsu swamped the trees below them, and she could see flickers of orange in the canopy. Closing her eyes in relief, Sakura allowed herself to hope.

"Put him down here," she said. "And I'll see about that arm."

"I'll find some splints," Juugo said, carefully propping Sasuke against the stony pillar beside the entrance.

"Thank you," Sakura murmured, kneeling down beside Sasuke. The big man paused, and she looked up at him, but he ducked his head and moved away.

Sakura concentrated for a moment on breathing. Because of the strain, she'd been taking only shallow breaths, and now she forced herself to take each inhalation to maximum depth. Her ribs were badly bruised, but that didn't bother her nearly as much as Sasuke's colour. Was that the faintest tinge of blue?

He was, if anything, more beautiful than ever. The planes of his face had shifted towards a man's angularity, but it had only refined instead of coarsening the features she remembered so well. She wished his eyes would open, and smudged a streak of blood from his cheek.

"Get your hands off my Sasuke-kun, you freak!"

Startled, Sakura jerked around in time to see a red-haired woman running toward her down the ramp to the temple's next level. She groped for a kunai, then relaxed as Juugo, returning with a handful of sticks, held out one arm and caught the woman up off her feet.

"Let go of me, you stupid lump! And you, pink freak, back off now. Sasuke-kun is mine!"

For an instant, only an instant, Sakura felt stabbing loss. Sasuke-kun and this loud-mouth? Sasuke, who had turned his back on Konoha, on everyone, for revenge? With this?

"He needs the mednin," Juugo said, distracted, staring out at the ever-approaching battle. He dropped the sticks at Sakura's feet, but kept the redhead hooked over the crook of his arm.

"What would you know, lummox? Sasuke-kun doesn't need anyone but me!"

The redhead kicked viciously at his knees, but seeing that she wasn't having any impact, Sakura let out her breath, then reached for one of the sticks.

"You obviously don't know Sasuke-kun very well," she said flatly, pulling supplies from her backpack. "One thing he never could stand was pushy idiots laying claim to him."

Mine. They'd said the same thing, she and Ino. Every second girl in class. So long ago, now, and Sakura felt a flush of shame, to see herself in this loud-mouth, pretending a closeness which didn't exist. Sasuke had always hated it.

"I'm going to rip that fake peach fuzz out by the roots!" screamed the girl. "I'll beat you black and blue, I'll-"

"Yeah."

It was only a murmur, but it had immediate effect. The redhead froze, and craned her head up to look at her captor.

"Oh, shit!"

Suddenly she was fighting and scratching in earnest, frantically trying to free herself. Sakura had no trouble guessing why: she knew what that spreading black pattern of lines meant. And she'd heard the change in Juugo's voice, the gloating pleasure, the undernote of excitement.

His attention had been on the combat below the temple, but the redhead's efforts to escape were a serious mistake. Reaching down a black-hatched hand, he grasped her by the neck and lifted her up to eye level.

"Shit, shit, shit, shit, shit," choked the redhead.

"Yeah," Juugo said again, sounding bizarrely as if he was agreeing with her as he drew his free hand back into a fist.

"Yaaaahhh!"

A tidal wave of orange burst over the pair.

"Naruto." Sakura tried not to sob with relief as one orange-suited figure broke away to tumble to a halt beside her. "I knew you'd come."

"Of course I came! I said so, didn't I?" But however confident the words, Naruto's eyes were wide with dismay, looking from Sasuke to her and back. "Is he-?"

"For now. We need to get him to Tsunade-sama straight away."

"Right!" He jumped to his feet, waving wildly to someone below. And then smiled down at her, that all-encompassing, world-inspiring grin. "Don't worry Sakura. We'll be in time. We've done it. We've got Sasuke back."

"Yes," Sakura said, sniffing, struggling to breathe. And forced herself not to ask 'for how long?'.


	6. Blinded

6. Blinded 

One day on, and that was still the question which wouldn't go away. Sakura, chin on knees, stared at the far end of a stone bench she had avoided for three years.

"Forehead Girl! What are you doing all the way out here?"

"Hi Ino-pig." Sakura made herself smile as the blonde girl plumped herself down on the bench beside her. "Just thinking."

"Here, I brought you this. Save you dropping by the store."

A daffodil, out of season, carefully wrapped. Sakura said "Thank you," as she accepted it, then had to struggle not to crush the fleshy stem, blinking furiously to keep back the tears.

After a sharp look, Ino chattered on: "No-one knew where you were - I had to ask Hyuuga Hinata to find you. I swear, every time I see that girl I need to hold myself back from doing an intervention. That jacket is a crime against womankind."

"She needs a ribbon." Sakura gave her friend a more genuine smile, very grateful for mended fences. "We should do it."

"Eh? A make-over?" Ino's sky-blue eyes widened. "Do you mean it? She's Hyuuga-clan, after all."

"That's even more reason. They're all so serious." Sakura hopped up. "Where did you see her?"

"At the hospital. To which point – are you really not going to stay by Sasuke-kun's bedside? After three whole years of that insane training regimen and you being all about getting him back, you're not going to make sure you're the first thing he sees when he opens his eyes?"

"That's right." Sakura shook her head at Ino's open-mouthed astonishment, and started back to the hospital. "I was getting too worked up. Even though Tsunade-sama says she can't find any damage, he's so deeply unconscious that we can't be sure, and after a full day there's no sign of change. Whenever I think about what I might have done to him – anyway, I wasn't doing Sasuke-kun any good being there."

"Hn. I don't see how you were doing any bad, either." A sly grin. "Maybe the rumours about you and Naruto are true?"

"What rumours?"

"Ah, well," Ino said airily. "A little bird told me that you and he have grown very close recently."

Sakura flushed, annoyed and embarrassed. But then shook her head and smiled softly, thinking of her team-mate.

"I love Naruto," she said, then laughed at the shriek Ino let out. "He's like a brother, pig-squeal-girl! It's amazing how someone who used to be so annoying can turn into someone I look up to. I think he really will become Hokage one day, the kind of person everyone can rely on." She closed her eyes against the reasons it wasn't currently true. "I'll bet Hinata was waiting outside his room at the hospital."

"Where else?" The excitement died out of Ino's eyes. "How long are they going to keep him there?"

"Until he calms down. Last time they let the sedative wear off, Yamato-taichou practically had to mummify him to keep him still." Sakura bit her lip. "Even more reason to stay away from the hospital. I can't stand the feeling that everything's falling apart. This is the longest I've ever seen Naruto in a rage, and if it weren't for having to stop him, I can't guess what Tsunade-sama might have done when that message arrived. And Kakashi-sensei – you can't imagine what he was like when I described that masked Akatsuki's face. He accused me of lying. I think he was this far from attacking me."

"His eye..."

"Yeah. Do you ever feel, Ino, that someone forgot to tell you all the important stuff? Or that they don't trust you with the real secrets? Who is this third Uchiha? And – there was something written on the messenger-frog's back. Numbers, some kind of code. I'm sure Tsunade-sama has worked out what it means. And she's not telling me. She's not even telling Shizune-senpai. I'm scared she's going to do something. And the way the elders are acting –" She stopped herself, and snorted. "Well, you can see why I didn't want to be around Sasuke-kun, with this kind of negative attitude. Especially when, right now, I really want to hit things and scream."

Ino was frowning, but tossed it away with a flick of long blonde hair and a smile. "That might wake him up. I know a few more traditional methods I'd try first. Bah. I'll ask that sloth Shikamaru if he's heard anything. But first, flower for Sasuke-kun and victim for Operation Make-over. Back here in ten."

Sakura saluted, laughing, but had lost any trace of smile by the time she reached Sasuke's ANBU-guarded room. He was still too quiet, not shifting about minutely as a sleeper would, but his heartbeat was steady and his colour good. She set the flower in a vase where he would see it, and forced herself not to reach out and touch the back of his hand.

"The problem is, now you're safely here I can let myself be angry with you," she said. "Things are getting bad, Sasuke-kun. We need you. When are you going to look past your revenge and see that?"

---

Author's note: As to "why Obito" – mainly because it seems very logical to me. [Hebi seems to 'vanish' in this chap, you'll find out a little more about them in the next.

BuBBLe Tea BaBe: thanks for spotting that. Made a minor update to clear up the transition. And, yeah, deliberately out of character for Kakashi – this is not something I think he could be Zen and laid-back about.


	7. Weak

7. Weak 

Sakura could never decide if someone arriving while she practiced made her perform better or worse. Today, having finally allowed poor Hinata-chan to escape, she had been more interested in working off energy than excelling, but as she hurled a kunai to trigger the trap sequence a final time, she knew she couldn't resist showing how far she'd come.

She'd built the course herself, after they'd returned from Orochimaru's hideout. Built it not because she'd felt so crushed, so useless, but for Chiyo-baasama. She would not have survived the battle with Sasori without the Sand elder, and by facing the same kind of challenges she acknowledged a debt she could never repay.

Of course, there was no real opponent in traps and devices. They were not nearly unpredictable enough, so she'd made it a race, the goal to pass a door at the far end of the ground which slowly closed. The needles had become the easy part, a kind of dance, and it had been a long while since the whirling, knife-tipped rods had come close. The tunnels were always a problem and she bounced through them twisting like a cat as spikes thrust in random directions. Then a hail of kunai and shuriken colliding with each other, ricocheting wildly. She had to turn to fit through the narrowing door, and felt fire score across one calf before she was through and done.

"You have mastered this one, Sakura."

"No." Sakura crossed the sand to where her master had entered, being sure not to search her expression too obviously. "Sasori's weapons were poisoned." She pointed to the line of red creeping toward her shoe. "This is failure."

"Is it?" Tsunade-sama's eyes were sceptical. "You reached the goal. What comes after is a separate success or defeat."

Sakura bowed her head, having no argument, then waited for Tsunade-sama to tell her why she'd been sought out instead of sent for.

"Uchiha Sasuke has escaped the hospital."

"Ah." Sakura grimaced, but couldn't pretend shock. "He never was very likely to stay where he was put."

Golden eyes searched green, then Tsunade-sama nodded. "Come to the hospital when you're finished here."

"Yes, Tsunade-sama." Sakura watched her depart, the twin tails of pale blonde hair lacking their usual bounce. She'd rarely felt her master's power and experience so strongly, and dreaded the grief and killing rage beneath her control. And was grateful for her forbearance, for leaving when she'd spotted him too.

Sighing, Sakura rubbed a thumb over the scratch to remove it, then replaced her glove. She straightened, fumbled for the right words, then said: "I'm guessing you didn't come here just to watch me practice."

She'd only known his general location, and felt a flash of irritation when the air above one of the big central rocks shifted. Looking down at her again. But no anger could stop her heart from soaring, to see him whole. Then, as he jumped lightly down, she saw Sasuke's eyes.

They had always been his best feature: the irises huge, inky-black. She supposed his brother had longer lashes, but Uchiha Itachi's eyes were so dead, while Sasuke's always told her the most of what he was feeling. Long ago, when she'd first seen him at the Academy, they had been so bright and eager. After – withdrawn, showing only focused concentration, or irritation flashing to anger or mockery. Rarely, so preciously, there had been pleasure, during the good times before the black hatred had swallowed him up.

It was hatred she had feared to see, and never thought to find herself dismayed at its absence. But this – this was new. He looked tired, tired as if it was a profound state of being. Like a candle near to guttering out.

"Sakura." He paused, almost as if he'd forgotten what else he planned to say. "What happened after I passed out?"

Of all the imagined reunions, all those nights thinking through what she would do and say, how he would respond, she had never pictured them skipping the anger and recriminations. Or, at the least, an apology, even if it was only a gesture, a look. This Sasuke – his eyes shadowed, inward-looking – barely seemed to see her.

She hadn't thought it possible for him to hurt her more. Three years she'd spent, training dawn to dusk, pushing late into the night with her studies, reaching a level she'd never dreamed of touching. Surviving Tsunade-sama. Obsessively examining the meaning of 'thank you'. And he couldn't even manage 'hello'?

"There's something I need to say to you first," she said, anger competing with increasing alarm. He looked so empty. Still, these words had burned in her throat since that island, since he had dismissed them, attacked them, left them again. She had to speak.

He didn't react when she lifted one hand and put it on his shoulder – so much higher than hers now. But his eyes were on hers, just as she had pictured it, when she drew her other hand back in a chakra filled fist.

"Bonds. Don't. Make. You. Weak."


	8. Things Fall Apart

8. Things Fall Apart 

Stone shattered. Sakura had not held back in any way, using such pulverising force that nothing was left of the rock but shards and dust.

Sasuke didn't flinch, though she'd struck directly beside his waist. But the heat of the curse seal washed beneath her restraining hand, and he skipped a breath, eyes focusing on her properly. Whatever happened beyond this point, she would always treasure this day, for that had been a killing blow and he had been unprepared for it. He had seen she intended to strike, but had vastly underestimated her ability, had not imagined for one second that in terms of raw destructive power she outmatched him. To look in his eyes and see reassessment was her proudest moment.

"Of course, you're still faster than me," she said, turning so he couldn't also see that she was shaking. "It's not often someone obligingly stands still so I can hit them."

It didn't feel as good as it should. Sakura crossed to the water bucket by the entrance and sluiced her face, then grabbed her towel and tried to clean herself up a little, watching him survey the settling dust cloud, any flicker of reaction already gone from shadowed eyes. Sasuke had always been so determined, so forward-moving, and this sleepwalking version of him only made her feel increasingly uneasy. She did not hold any confidence that Sasuke would simply return to the fold. Yes, he'd chosen not to kill his brother, but what of this other Uchiha?

"I'll keep that in mind," he said, and the weary note in his voice caused any lingering triumph to evaporate. Whatever point she had hoped to prove had come too late. Her growth was not the thing which had turned him from his revenge or brought him back to Konoha. This wasn't about her, right now.

She was the reason he breathed, though. And while he lived, her purpose remained. Frowning, Sakura set aside fear and disappointment, and decided that the most positive thing she could do to combat this new emptiness was answer his question.

Gesturing for him to follow her as she headed back to the hospital, and insensibly relieved when he wordlessly obeyed, she described their descent from the throne room, leaving out how much as she would have liked to have given that redhead a good kicking, and her regret that the woman had escaped during Juugo's frenzy.

"They searched the temple while we were getting ready to move you, but all the Akatsuki – including the water nin fighting in the forest – had retreated," she told him, highly conscious of at least three ANBU following them, and the startled double-takes of passers-by. Uchiha Sasuke, missing-nin, strolling through the village. It was surreal. Even those who did not know him reacted to the Uchiha fan blazoned on his shirt.

The – what? They'd cut the bloodied rags he'd been wearing off him, replaced them with a hospital gown. Yet now he wore long black trousers and sandals and a white long-sleeved shirt with a black short-sleeved shirt over the top, the sleeve and back marked with the Uchiha emblem.

"Where did you get those clothes?" she asked, too startled to keep her mouth shut.

He looked down. "My father's."

It was impossible not to falter, but she only checked for a moment, then forced herself toward the hospital door, face as expressionless as she could manage and still surely showing more than his. Was it a dislike of theft or a need to wear that symbol which had led him to this solution to a hospital gown?

No-one had known what to make of the throne room branded with the emblem of the Uchiha clan, and an ANBU squad had been sent to sift through the areas which appeared to have been deliberately destroyed. The Uchiha had been Konoha's police force, but it was obvious those hidden rooms in the temple were nothing to do with upholding the village's laws. Just what did the Uchiha fan stand for?

They reached the secure floor of the hospital and Sakura stopped at the end of the corridor, looking at a highly embarrassed and miserable girl sitting on a bench. She, at least, hadn't changed her clothes before returning, and Sakura found herself grateful to Hinata for not flinching away from Naruto. Timid as the Hyuuga girl was, there was a quietly stubborn core to her.

"When we-" Sakura searched Sasuke's face, his sheer lack of reaction making her want to shake him. "We had barely reached Konoha when word arrived that Jiraiya-sama had been killed by the leader of the Akatsuki. Naruto-"

"Vowed vengeance and tried to run off to carry it out?"

The words were without inflection, and that somehow made them worse. They'd been rivals, friends, had fought bitterly over Sasuke's own path of revenge. It was hardly an exact parallel, but Sakura couldn't deny that Naruto's rage was any less self-destructive.

"Something changed," she said, voice dropping. "On our way back, he was just so happy to have found you, for you to be alive. But – before we even reached the village, before word about Jiraiya-sama arrived, he – I've never seen Naruto at all like that: withdrawn, abrasive. I – we've both seen him fight with the Kyuubi's power. When he's most upset, angriest, it gives him extra strength. He fights furiously, gives his all. If he's overwhelmed in battle, loses his senses, the Kyuubi's chakra takes over, fights for him. He's vowed not to use it." She paused, to make sure her voice wouldn't shake. "No-one's acting like they should."

"How is this different?" This time Sasuke walked on ahead of her, not sparing a glance for Hinata as he stopped to look in the open door of the room opposite.

They must have just given him another sedative. His eyes were open and he squirmed beneath Yamato-taichou's restraints, violent jerking visibly slowing. Catching movement at the door, he turned to glare, then his mouth twisted into a sneer, those bright blue eyes full of something Sakura had never seen there before this past day.

Malice.


	9. Doubletake

9. Doubletake

"Uchiha."

The purring, gloating voice did not belong with the Naruto Sakura treasured. In the past there had been outbursts of grief or righteous anger which had unleashed the Kyuubi's power, but these had not changed the essential person, not while consciousness remained. She'd learned to look at his eyes for the tell-tale changes which warned that the Kyuubi was close to the surface, and this blue-eyed, sneering creature flew in the face of the lessons of the past.

"The Sennin's death was only an excuse, then?" Sasuke asked, circling the wood-bounded bed. For all the attention he gave the other occupants of the room - Tsunade-sama, Kakashi-sensei and Yamato-taichou - they might as well have been furniture.

"Distracted what little resistance he had, perhaps." Naruto laughed, malevolent glee. "And then they fought me. Glorious. But this one-" Blue eyes dipped beneath sagging lids, then swivelled toward Yamato-taichou in the corner nearest the door. "I know you now, wood man. I know your smell. I'll split your bones and suck out the marrow, next time that scent's in my reach."

Hinata had moved from the bench, and took Sakura's arm with an unexpectedly strong grip. Her soft mouth was set in a firm line, and Sakura couldn't help but share her anger. It was not Naruto at all. Had not been Naruto this past day, but had pretended to be, amusing itself with vicious words and stolen blows.

He – it – had shifted its attention back to Sasuke, voice slurring as the massive dose of drugs began to overwhelm it. "And you. A few hours sooner and I could have had you, and taken the little girl as a bonus." The eyes dropped, the voice fell to a whisper. "We could go far, Uchiha, you and I..."

Unconscious again. Sasuke's shadowed eyes surveyed Naruto's face, neither disturbed nor impressed, while the restraining band of wood melted away.

"The seal must have weakened far beyond our estimation, Hokage-sama," Yamato-taichou said. "For the Kyuubi to control Naruto so completely-"

"The seal hasn't weakened." Sasuke's eyes had become the deep red of the sharingan, but the colour faded even as he spoke. "Wake him up."

Sakura swore she could hear Tsunade-sama's teeth grinding. Kakashi-sensei certainly sighed and looked down. The question of what exactly to do with Sasuke once they'd got him back to Konoha had long been an issue of debate. No matter how fond the Hokage was of Sakura and Naruto, she'd not tolerate Sasuke giving her orders, even for their sake.

After a brief survey of Sasuke's face – which had fallen back to that weary, unseeing stillness – the Godaime Hokage surprised Sakura almost to gaping by quietly turning to Naruto and reversing the effect of the last dose of sedative.

Another of those unreal moments, as the six of them stood in silence while Naruto began to react, twitching and shifting in the bed, turning his head to side to side. His eyelids lifted, blue eyes groggy with the effect of so many cycles of drugs, but there was nothing in the face turned toward her which suggested to Sakura that this was anything but her friend.

Giving silent thanks, she smiled at him encouragingly, then frowned at the increasingly feverish colour of his skin. He had gone rigidly still, gaze becoming fixed. Was this another assault on his control by the Kyuubi?

Sakura was searching her mind frantically for symptom comparisons when Kakashi-sensei snickered. Chuckling to himself, he leaned back against the wall to her left and pulled out one of the tattered books he constantly carried about.

"I think he may have some blood pressure issues," he murmured, as everyone else in the room followed the direction of Naruto's gaze.

_Ino's going to be sorry she missed this_, Sakura thought.

They hadn't changed that much during the Great Hinata Makeover. The girl had silky hair and marvellous skin – she simply dressed to hide rather than show her figure. They'd caught back the hair from the sides of her face and braided it with a couple of ribbons, replaced the baggy pants with knee-length black tights and found a long-sleeved v-neck shift to put over it. It was a thick cotton cloth in a nice shade of pale lavender to match her eyes, and Ino had insisted on the deeply scooped black vest to go over the shift. Other than a slightly lower neckline, Hinata was almost as covered as before, but the way the vest ran under her bust displayed both her small waist and the curves Sakura had given up any hope of matching.

The crimson flush didn't really go with lavender, though.

"Hinata-chan, could you do me a favour and find Naruto something to eat?" Sakura said hastily, before the girl died of mortification. Even Sasuke was looking, damn him. "He'll be starving after being unconscious so long."

"O-of course, Sakura-san," Hinata replied, looking so relieved Sakura felt guilty. "I'm glad you are better, Naruto-kun," she added, and bowed formally to Tsunade-sama – a move which made Sakura glad they'd chosen non-stretch fabrics – before beating a hasty retreat.

"Hin-Hinata-chan! Come back!" Naruto jerked upright, then almost fell out of the bed as his head reminded him of the after-effects of enough drugs to keep an elephant down.

It was a very reluctant Hyuuga girl who reappeared in the doorway, as painfully aware of the people on the far side of the bed as Naruto was not. Tsunade-sama had covered her face and Sasuke had looked down rather than watch more. Sakura wondered if, like Kakashi-sensei, he was struggling with an urge to laugh.

"Ramen!" Naruto said, obliviously. "I like ramen! Can you try and find some?"

Hinata's eyes grew wide and Sakura contemplated murder. Seriously, there was no hope for Naruto.

"Ah, and, Hinata-chan!" He hesitated, the corners of his mouth curling softly. "That colour looks great on you. You should wear it more often."

When she smiled, really smiled, Hinata was beautiful.

---

Author's Note:

Hinata cleavage greater than Reunion with Long Lost Brother.

Omolara and lilcrazygurl: thanks for the clarification on –kaichou and -taichou. The source I was reading made it sound like they were simply alternate spellings.


	10. Keyhole

10. Keyhole

"Hey, Sakura-chan, why am I in hospital?" Naruto asked as Hinata finally made her escape. "Did we get attacked on the way back? Did Sasuke wake up yet?"

Sakura didn't answer, just pointed and watched. It was always something to see Naruto when he was truly happy, the way he seemed to inhale joy and become twice as tall, eyes twice as blue. He drank in the sight of Sasuke as if looking at him fulfilled some need which had been starved, as if he was taking a breath for the first time in years. But he didn't grin, or shout, his mouth shifting into a sombre smile, sad and strangely accepting.

"Are you back, Sasuke, or are you just here?"

"I don't know."

There was no surprise in Naruto's face. For all his outward optimism, he'd shared Sakura's doubts.

"Why not? If you decided not to kill your brother?"

Sasuke closed his eyes, his face calm. When he opened them again, the sharingan's bloody gleam gave his features an alien, inhuman aspect.

"What he told me, that night, I heard it as a challenge, heard: 'You are weak. If you want to kill me, get stronger and try again. But you'll never surpass me.' I wasn't listening properly. Wasn't seeing what he was saying. 'You are weak. You must get stronger, and try again. Surpass me.'"

He let the sharingan fade and went on, voice flat and weary, with an edge of bitterness. "These eyes, they're part of that group's purpose, just like the monster in you. When I saw that what Itachi wanted most was for me to surpass him, to have his blood on my hands as he had my clan's on his, how could I finish that strike? What does it achieve to give him what he wants? Besides, if I am to avenge my clan, I need first to know how much of a puppet Itachi was. At what point he came in contact with these Akatsuki."

"None of that's any reason not to come back," Naruto said, inescapably single-minded.

"There was one other thing my brother told me to do, Naruto. To kill my best friend. I'd prefer to not have the opportunity again." As Naruto's jaw sagged in shock, Sasuke's brooding anger surfaced, and the black glance he gave to the senior nin in the room was far from friendly. "Besides, Konoha's interest in bringing my brother to account has always seemed, shall we say, lacking? More energy appears to have gone into preventing me from doing so."

"Wait! Why would he want you to kill me? That doesn't make sense. They're trying-"

"Ironic, yes. Our team makeup was beyond his predictions." Sasuke's dark eyes had remained on Kakashi-sensei, who had long since put away his book. "What is the name of the man belonging to that eye?"

Kakashi-sensei sighed, looking down. Then, ignoring his former student's fulminating gaze, he turned to Sakura and said: "I owe you an apology, Sakura. I shouldn't have disbelieved your description. But for the man who gave me this eye to be alive means that I failed him even more than I knew. My team-mate. My friend. Uchiha Obito." He nodded toward Tsunade-sama. "As you said yesterday, it is unreasonable to believe it to be anyone else. The right side of his body was crushed. His dying wish was that his left eye be given to me. And we left him, deep in enemy territory, could never recover the corpse."

"No matter how fierce his loyalty to Konoha may be, such an experience must change a man," Tsunade-sama said.

"I'll never believe –" Kakashi-sensei stopped, his visible eye narrowing to a slit. "Well, let's just say that it must have changed him beyond comprehension."

"Call it a working theory," Tsunade-sama said dryly. Sakura could see the signs that her already thin patience was stretching to the limit. "Uchiha Sasuke. If the seal has not weakened, explain this." She gestured generally to Naruto and Yamato-taichou, who had seated himself on the floor in the corner, worn from a long night watching over Naruto.

"Something has been added," Sasuke replied, the question seeming to distract him at least momentarily from remembered anger. "You have a fox and a frog living inside you now, Naruto. It must be getting crowded."

"E-eh?!" Naruto, perplexed, pulled up his shirt to reveal the markings around his navel. "Are you sure?"

Sasuke's gaze was turned toward Tsunade-sama. He'd been watching for her reaction, and had not missed the way golden eyes had widened, but commented only with the faintest curl of his lip before going on.

"The frog is a key, Naruto. The key to the Kyuubi's seal, sitting right by the lock. By being there, it makes the shape of the lock obvious. The Kyuubi cannot reach the key, but picture the lock as a tiny moving pinprick of a hole in a very large wall. Barely enough of a weakness for more than mischief, but apparently entertaining while it lasted. It was controlling you, until I made the lock a little harder to see."

Sakura wasn't certain Naruto had followed the details of the explanation, but he understood the last part of it well enough, cheeks draining of colour.

"Did I hurt anyone?" he asked, voice small.

"Enough." Tsunade-sama had reached her limit. "You." She pointed to Sasuke. "You know nothing of the efforts made regarding Uchiha Itachi, and while you are in this village you will acknowledge its rule. Kakashi, take him to my office. Sakura, you have patients: I will see you at sunset. Yamato, you are overdue rest. Report to me in the morning. And you –" Her tone softened. "You hurt no-one, Naruto." She glanced at the door, where the rattle of crockery heralded Hinata's hesitant arrival. "Eat your ramen."

Everyone obeyed. No-one looked happy.

---

Notes:

Thanks for the colour dinks, Gabzilla.


	11. Enough Rope

11. Enough Rope

There were no patients on Sakura's schedule: that had just been Tsunade-sama's way of saying 'go away'. Still, there was one person Sakura wanted to see, and she headed further into the secure floor with as brisk a step as she could manage while feeling so lost.

The rooms here were windowless, the corridors sectioned for containment, and the doors heavy with seals. They were rarely used, and most were inactive. Sakura placed her hand in the centre of the seal covering the very end room's door and released it.

Despite the level of security, the room inside was as light and airy as possible, with high ceilings and homey decorations. No windows, true, and the light was all artificial, but the place was designed to feel like neither hospital nor prison.

"Sakura-san." The tall man had been sitting cross-legged in the very centre of the room, but scrambled immediately to his feet and came toward her.

"Juugo-san." Sakura smiled at him, finding his evident and straightforward pleasure at seeing her heartening. "Still no change?"

"None." The word was full of a sense of peace. "None at all."

"I'm sorry that we don't have any way to give you a more open room." Sakura glanced at the line of dense black writing which followed the threshold of the door, making sure she was in no risk of crossing it. "We're working on a more portable solution, but it takes time to prepare that level of chakra-draining equipment."

"There's no rush. It's very comfortable here."

"Can I bring you anything? More books? A portable television?"

"I'm fine, Sakura-san." He spoke with a quiet certainty, apparently truly happy to just be alone in his head for a while. "But you are still grieving. Has he not woken yet?"

It was extraordinary how transparent this relative stranger found her. Sakura had been making such an effort not to walk around with her heart on her sleeve.

"Physically, he has. He's still...caught up in the past, just looking for a broader picture of it." She lifted her hands, feeling helpless, but pushed back the tide of hurt which had been washing ever higher all afternoon. "We will continue to look for a cure to your curse no matter what happens, Juugo-san. I wish I could promise you more than that, but my results with Anko-san have not been encouraging."

"This is more than I have hoped for in a long time." Juugo glanced at the floor, at the line he was not permitted to cross. "I never would have believed there was such a simple solution."

"At least we can continue treating the symptom, until we can find the cause," Sakura said. It had been an obvious possibility: the curse seal had increased Sasuke's power, but it also used up his chakra. By draining all of Juugo's chakra, they'd found that his curse, and the violent urges which came with it, didn't activate. "I'll bring you some books tomorrow."

She felt awful closing him back inside, but there was little choice. Mild as he was when the curse was inactive, until they found an absolutely certain way to keep him drained of chakra at all times, he was too much of a potential risk to Konoha to not keep locked up.

The days were getting shorter. It seemed like Autumn was rushing by, like time was slipping through her fingers. Realising that she'd not eaten since breakfast, Sakura mechanically forced down an early dinner while watching the sun sink, then reported dutifully to Tsunade-sama.

The fifth Hokage was sipping sake and shuffling the piles of paper on her desk. Chin propped on one fist, she glanced up as Sakura entered, then jerked her head to one side, signalling for Shizune to leave.

"I have rarely met a boy more deserving to be slapped," Tsunade-sama said, when they were alone.

"He's never been...very polite. Sometimes I'm not sure he even realises."

"Bah. He's arrogant as sin. It always was a failing of the Uchihas."

"Did he accept the wristlet?"

"Oh yes. He wants information. He'll play along until he gets it. Then-" She shrugged, and gulped back the rest of her sake. "I'm following your lead in this, Sakura, and I'll concede that you've been right so far. But you should not trust that boy. He's extremely unstable."

Sakura didn't argue with this, relieved that Tsunade-sama was willing to continue giving Sasuke a long leash. Pushing him only ever seemed to make him go in the wrong direction. Just like pleading, begging and trying to beat him unconscious. She wondered if the fact that he'd only had a single guard had made him suspicious, or if the shock and indecision left in the wake of his battle with Itachi would keep that out of focus.

"He hasn't decided against returning, yet," she pointed out. "And he listed not wanting to kill Naruto as a reason."

"That read to me more not wanting to follow his brother's orders. His focus is still vengeance. Don't let yourself be sacrificed to it."

Sakura bowed her head, hoping her teacher would read that as agreement. But one of the Legendary Three was not easily fooled, and Tsunade-sama's palm slapped the desk.

"Look at me!" The golden eyes were molten hot when Sakura raised her own. "Whatever he may have meant to you in the past, Uchiha Sasuke turned his back on this village. And you. Only because we can find no sign that he has been actively working against Konoha is there any possibility that his desertion can be forgiven. But valuable as the Uchiha bloodline is, I'll not risk the safety of Konoha to any further possibility of having another Uchiha turned against us. And I see little sign that he considers anyone more than possible tools in his obsession. Has he even thanked you for saving his life?"

"It's not thanks I want from him," Sakura said, unsteadily, then pushed on to a subject she could at least bear to speak about. "Tsunade-sama, did the Sandaime Hokage place Naruto and Sasuke-kun in the same team on purpose? Is there some relationship between the Kyuubi and the sharingan?"

"Sarutobi did not record his reasoning," Tsunade-sama replied, a non-answer if Sakura had ever heard one. "Go home, Sakura. And remember, while your loyalty to Uchiha Sasuke is admirable, you cannot let it conflict with your loyalty to the village. I will not forgive you if you place him above Konoha."

"Yes, Tsunade-sama."

Sakura escaped, remembering all too well what she'd said to Sasuke when he'd first chosen to leave Konoha. She had changed a great deal since then.

Yet not at all.


	12. Choices

12. Choices

The Sandaime Hokage had chosen the members of Team Seven. It couldn't be mere coincidence that Konoha's last remaining Uchiha was teamed with the village's jinchuuriki. Not when time had shown that a powerful sharingan user was capable of suppressing the Kyuubi. And since the Akatsuki appeared to be collecting the bijuu, Sakura was beginning to see a reason why they might want to force the development of an extremely powerful sharingan user.

Walking home, it was not the plots revolving around her team-mates which preoccupied Sakura, but her own role. Those first years at the Academy, she'd shone only at knowledge tests. No-one had even considered her for training as a medical ninja until she'd put herself forward. She'd changed, true, to the point where she was capable of facing someone like Sasori and contributing. But what happened afterwards, the monumental scale of the battle between Naruto and Orochimaru, had set her firmly back in her place. The laggard, the extra filling out the team numbers. Watching their backs. In battles beyond a hand-to-hand scale the most she'd be able to do was pick up the pieces afterwards. She needed to be better than that, and had no idea how to make it possible.

Nor was she so selfless to not wonder if, should she have reached that level, Sasuke might have looked at her more than once today. She'd barely been visible to him.

Wanting only to curl up and wallow in self-pity, Sakura was not precisely pleased to see Naruto sitting on her doorstep. But the down-turned corners of his mouth were useful for putting her feelings into perspective. She at least didn't have to wake up and ask if she'd hurt any of her friends while she'd slept.

"Want some hot chocolate?"

"Sure." He'd rarely sounded more subdued.

Sakura had moved into her own place about six months ago, a two-room apartment closer to the hospital. Proud as her parents were of her achievements, they'd begun to fret about the pressure she was putting herself under. This way she didn't have to feel guilty about missing meals, or come home and pretend to be happy.

"It's always so neat here, Sakura-chan," Naruto said, snagging one of the kitchenette chairs. "Don't you ever just want to kick back?"

Arid, was what her mother said. Few decorations. The team photo kept in a drawer so that she was not always looking at it.

"I'm really not here that much," she said, pouring milk into a saucepan.

"Mm." He was quiet while she stirred cocoa powder through the milk, then: "Sasuke wants us to do something for him."

Sakura froze. "What?"

"He didn't say. Wants us to meet him tomorrow afternoon at the Hei Bridge."

She made herself keep stirring, unsure if this was a breakthrough or precisely what Tsunade-sama had been worrying about.

"That smells good, Sakura-chan."

With a faint smile, Sakura carried over two mugs, and watched with familiar tolerance as he filled one near to overflowing with sugar cubes. The nights were growing cool, and the creamy drink a welcome indulgence.

"If Sasuke comes back, what will happen to Sai?"

"I don't know." She'd never thought about it. "I'm not comfortable with the idea of him returning to Root. It bothers me that such an organisation even exists in Konoha."

"It won't when I'm Hokage." He was absolute, but not really focused on Root. "Sasuke was wearing a bracelet."

"Tracking device. An alarm will go off if he removes it." Which had a hidden back up. And, hopefully slightly better concealed, a tiny needle full of sedative. Not perfect, but there was a chance it might be effective.

She watched him hunching further over his cup.

"Ero-Sennin's dead, Sakura."

"I know." What else could she say?

"I get Sasuke a little more now. Ero-Sennin was – Ero-Sennin was -." Tears dripped toward milky chocolate, but he dashed them away. "I'm going to kill them. Those Akatsuki."

"I know."

"I don't know how much I'd give up to make it happen, either." He sighed. "And yet, I don't get Sasuke enough. Because giving up Konoha, giving up everyone I know in order to do it – wouldn't that make them win more?"

Sakura didn't say anything. They'd spoken before about Sasuke's decision. She had no way to be certain what his choice would have been, without the influence of the curse seal, without the renewed bastardry of his brother tipping him over the edge. Her chocolate went cool, cupped between her palms.

"Hey, Sakura-chan."

"Mm?"

"Hinata-chan likes me. Doesn't she?"

"Only since forever." She smiled at him, pleasantly surprised that he'd at last figured that out. "You should ask her on a date."

"No."

Sakura blinked. She'd thought he liked Hinata.

"A girl like that – I never thought about her that way. Why would she want to be with me? She doesn't know – doesn't know what I am. With all these people after me, with this thing inside me - she doesn't need to be near me. It's better –"

With one flick of her wrist, Sakura tossed her cocoa in his face.

"Ehh?! Sakura-?!"

"How dare you, Naruto? How dare you?" Sakura couldn't remember the last time she'd been so angry. "When everyone in Konoha was looking at you and seeing a screw-up or a monster, Hinata was the only one seeing you. If you don't think you could like her in that way, that's one thing, but don't you dare stay away from her because you think that's better for her. Respect her enough to let her make that decision, not you!"

"B-but-but, Sakura-chan! Don't you see? If she, if we – there's so many people after me. If I die – or if the Kyuubi escapes – it's not just the danger, it's how she'll feel. It'll make it hurt worse!"

This time she threw the mug at him. It bounced off one shielding arm and smashed on the floor.

"How? How does it make it worse? You think it's better for her to have adored you half her life, and you never looked at her once, and then you die? How is that better?!"

Sakura flung out of her chair and fetched up against the kitchen counter, turning her back so he couldn't see her face.

"When Sasuke left that night, when I tried to make him stay - I told him I loved him." Her voice shook. She had never thought she'd admit this to anyone. "I told him I'd do anything for him. Anything. I told him – I told him I'd go with him. Leave Konoha, because I couldn't bear it, couldn't bear being without him. And it didn't change a thing. I humiliated myself in every way, and it wasn't enough for him." She clung to the counter, choking, the sick memory rising in her stomach. "And, you know, I'd do it again. The whole thing, just to hear the last thing he said to me. Not even real acknowledgement, but...just a tiny grain...a scrap. One drop of water in a desert. Even if he never looks at me again, I'll always have the single kind thing he said to me, before he went."

She couldn't go on, broke down as she'd been so determined not to do all day. The astonished and total silence behind her was finally broken by the scraping of the chair, and then she felt the lightest touch on her arm.

"Tomorrow at the Hei Bridge at three, okay?"

Another pause, then the front door opened. Just before he pulled it closed, he added one last comment:

"And Sasuke calls me an idiot."

--

Author's Note:

For those not entirely certain, yes Naruto is saying that Sasuke is an idiot in the last line, not suggesting that Sakura is.


	13. Finally Found All Your Courage

13. Finally found all your courage

Sakura was last to arrive, had almost – almost – not gone. She'd cried until she was sick, and not slept till dawn. The only positive act she'd managed all day was to bring in some books for Juugo, and even then she'd had someone else deliver them. He would have seen right through any attempt she made not to look as bad as she felt.

Hei Bridge had been one of the meeting places for Team Seven. The idea of them meeting there again, of Sasuke actually asking them to come, should have made her so happy. Yet Sakura paused at the top of the street, looking down at the two people most precious to her in the world sitting on opposite railings, and wanted to run away.

Their postures told her everything. Sasuke had reverted to withdrawn blankness, and Naruto was feeling crushed. It had been much easier when they bickered and tried to outdo each other.

"We should rename ourselves 'Team Black Cloud of Gloom' and be done with it," Sakura muttered, and started down.

Naruto greeted her with open relief, but Sasuke waited until she'd stopped in the centre of the bridge to look up. He must have spent the morning standing over some hapless seamstress, since his clothes looked brand new and the jacket, at least, sported the Uchiha crest. The tracking wristlet, which was five inches long and made of black metal, was barely visible beneath the cuff of his sleeve.

"Sakura." His eyes were flat, uncompromising, as he looked at her. "I spoke to Juugo today. Don't ever use jutsu like that on me again."

For a moment she could only stare at him blankly, aware mainly of Naruto stiffening in outrage to her left. But then a kind of peace spread through her, and she had to smile, for truly he was the most difficult creature in the world.

"You don't get to make my decisions, Sasuke-kun," she said, mildly.

Black eyes narrowed. "I don't want my life in exchange for yours, Sakura."

"Eh?" Naruto jumped down. "That wasn't Chiiyo-baa-"

"No." Sakura smiled reassuringly at Naruto. "Nothing like. Juugo-san must have seen the strain the jutsu was placing on my system, but I could have released it at any time." Or held out until she'd had a heart attack and they'd both died. "I'm sorry about last night, Naruto. I shouldn't have freaked out on you like that."

He flushed, then shrugged. "I figure it was your turn."

Sakura nodded, then turned back to Sasuke, who wasn't used to being ignored, but it made it a lot easier for her to approach him with strength instead of apologies. "So, we're here to help you with something, Sasuke-kun?"

Whatever it was, it was bad. Sasuke completely forgot his annoyance and she'd swear he went pale. "Follow me," was all he said, though, and walked off.

Exchanging perplexed glances, Sakura and Naruto obeyed, trailing him toward the western part of Konoha. Sakura concentrated on taking deep breaths and remembering that she was grateful for small things. Being alive. Being with these two, no matter how briefly. For having made a fool of herself in front of Naruto instead of Sasuke. It was very important to her that he never call her 'annoying' again.

Then she lost herself in the sheer pleasure of looking at him, at the spare restraint of his movements, the line of his neck and jaw, and only realised where the hell they were going when they were there. A two-story wall with a tiled roof, the gate choked with fallen leaves, and the ragged remains of cloth flapping overhead. The entrance to the Uchiha Enclave.

It was the creepiest place in the village. Even if it hadn't been the scene of a massacre, having such a sealed off and desolate area would have made it notable. Sakura had heard children at the Academy telling ghost stories about it, whispering of screams in the night and blood running down walls. Konoha's elite police force, slaughtered by one of their own clan and baying for justice.

Usually the gate was chained, but that was piled neatly on the ground, and scrapes in the accrued leaf litter revealed that he'd already opened it today. Sakura could see a scrap of crime scene tape still clinging to one hinge, and had to exchange another look with Naruto. What in the world did Sasuke want with them here?

He didn't seem interested in explaining, walking on without looking back to see if they followed. He still moved at the same slow, unhurried pace – straight and unwavering as if he was used to the world getting out of his way – but the ease departed with every step. Sakura could almost see the weight of the past settling on his shoulders.

The fan crest was everywhere. How insular and self-obsessed had the Uchiha been? It was like stepping into another world, one of high white walls and enclosed, sheltered streets. Every ten feet on the wall to their left was another crest, a constant reminder that this was Uchiha territory. Was it boast, pride, warning? With weeds thrusting through cracks and paint chipping away, it felt like mockery.

At the entrance of a tall house, Sasuke turned sharply right and walked inside, passing without hesitation through the back of the house to a large, walled garden. A Shishi-Odoshi fountain waited mutely in a dry pond, and trees formed a distant boundary. To their right was a pile of wood, carefully stacked for a bonfire.

"Everything which is not furnishings," Sasuke said, his voice sounding very thin and grey. Then, because they both just stood staring at him, he turned his head a fraction and explained why they were there: "Because I will not handle my brother's belongings. And I cannot touch my mother's."

Sakura felt like she was suffocating. She wanted to scream, to tear at the air, to do something to fracture the pounding force of grief. She wanted to undo the past ten years, to rewrite history, to shake mountains from their cradles and tumble them on the heads of everyone who had done this to Sasuke.

Instead she said: "Okay," and walked back into the house.

Naruto caught her just inside, as she was wiping at her face. He grabbed her arm, miming urgent questions.

"Do it or he'll burn the house down," she whispered, and pulled away.

It was awful. Truly awful. At first it seemed a very traditional, almost sterile home. But she kept finding tiny things – little keepsakes tucked away: a childhood drawing of Itachi's pinned inside a closet door, a badly carved wooden dove used as a paperweight, and sprigs of dried flowers woven with ribbon. She worked mainly on Sasuke's parents' room, while Naruto took Itachi's. Clothes were easy, until she found the carefully stored wedding robes. And then Naruto arrived with the heavy book spilling over with photographs.

"I found them already on the bonfire," he said in a hurried undertone, tumbling it into her lap. "I can't do this, Sakura. I can't."

Sakura stared down at the past. A man, consistently stern, but an edge of contentment in his eyes. A woman, beautiful, so like Sasuke she was a female mirror. The spiky-haired boy Sakura remembered from that first term at the Academy, his eyes so bright and eager. Hand trembling, she reached down and picked up one photograph in particular, held it so she and Naruto could look at it.

She'd met Uchiha Itachi. A cold, beautiful monster. Where was that in this boy with the kind eyes and tired smile? Where was the evil in the youth standing holding the hand of the little brother gazing up at him with absolute devotion? How could this be the same person?

"He worshipped him."

Naruto was crying. All afternoon he and Sakura had been shedding the tears Sasuke would not. Carefully, Sakura replaced the photograph, and tapped those falling loose back within the pages.

"Take it to Itachi's room. Make four shadow clones. Send one out the window with this, while the rest distract. Put it in a box, put it under your bed, never admit to its existence. The rest I don't think we can save, but I will not burn that."

The rest of the day had a sliding inevitability. It was sunset by the time the bonfire was ready – a huge mound of clothing, books, treasures; the remains of a family. Sakura was beyond tears when Sasuke placed the last item, a wall scroll featuring the inevitable Uchiha fans, and stood back, hands moving in the katon jutsu.

The blaze pushed back the dusk, set three exhausted sets of eyes burning red and gold, but only served to make the weight of approaching night heavier. Sasuke had been silent for hours, and stood unwavering, tracking cinders as they floated into the sky. When the supporting structure of wood began to collapse into ash, he spoke.

"I apologise, Naruto. Unreservedly. I tried to kill you. I will never raise my hand to you again."

Naruto lifted his own hand in protest, and then dropped it when Sasuke went on.

"I'd like to be alone now."

The quick glance Naruto sent Sakura was a question for which she did not have an answer. Stay? Argue? Sasuke sounded calm, collected, no hint of anger in his words. Just very tired.

"Goodnight," she said, finally, and hated that her voice was so small. She could sense Naruto biting his tongue all the way out through the grey, shadowy streets until they were past that awful gate and could breathe.

"Was that to burn out the nightmare?" Naruto asked slowly, "Or did he just get us to help him destroy his last ties to Konoha?"

"I don't know." She took another deep breath, then rubbed her bare arms against the night's chill, and began to walk slowly along the road. "Can you think of anything to say to him? All the arguments seem obvious. With Konoha's resources he has a greater chance of finding out the truth about his brother. The Akatsuki is a mutual enemy. Does he think he'll get weak, returning here?"

"He said to me, that day, that we suffer because of our bonds. That the pain of severing them would make him stronger."

Sakura winced. Had she, then, become an example to prove his point? Losing him had made her stronger. But – no, it was her need to get him back which drove her.

"I guess we wait and see. I'm still sure that pushing him, arguing, pleading – none of that will work."

Naruto sighed, and they walked on below trees shedding their leaves, looking down at the black glint of lake to their right.

"Do you think Hinata-chan likes ramen?"

It made her laugh, and she was glad of him, for his determination and optimism and the way he always looked forward.

"Go ask her and find out," she said, and watched him run off, waving. Then looked back at the lake, at the stair which led down the hillside to a long shadowy dock. To the figure barely visible in the darkness, the shape of a fan on its back.

She had no arguments left. But there was one more thing she had to say.


	14. Hello Darkness

14. Hello Darkness

Sakura had not even set foot upon the dock and already her heart was pounding so hard it felt like it was asking to be let out. Not from nerves, though she had plenty of them, but because of what stood at the end of the stretch of wooden boards.

Black and howling despair. Grief. Rage. Hatred so palpable you could feel it in your sinuses, taste it like burning metal. No bonfire was going to free Sasuke from the hold of the past. It had him in a death grip and was dragging him down.

Dangerously unstable, Tsunade-sama had said. Just plain dangerous was what Sakura faced here. The problem with dwelling in such an excess of hatred was that it washed over on to everyone around you, stained everything black. To approach Sasuke when he was like this, where killing intent radiated from him, where he was on a knife-edge of emotion, was to risk more than being told she was annoying.

Step.

Striking out at her would end any chance of Sasuke returning to himself. Naruto would not forgive him. Tsunade-sama would not forgive her. Sakura would certainly not forgive herself.

Step.

She would not be afraid of the one she loved. Sensibly wary, yes. But if she could not walk up to him here, and tell him the one simple little thing she had to say, then how would she be able to face down the people who had killed Jiraiya-sama, and keep Sasuke and Naruto safe from them?

Step.

Sasuke sensed her long before she reached him. She spotted the tiny lowering of his head, felt the shift in the atmosphere around her. It was not a welcoming change. She'd made him angrier, returning when he'd asked to be alone. Rejection beat at her, and it was all she could do not to allow herself to falter.

Step.

Right in front of her, and still so impossibly far away. He turned at least, so she did not have to talk to his back, but there was no friendship in his stance, and all she could see of his face was the set line of his mouth. She dropped her eyes, focused on the delicate shadow of his throat.

"I forgot to tell you the second thing I'd been saving up to say to you," she said, her mouth so dry that the words came out breathless. A wry twist tugged at the corner of her mouth, and she dropped her eyes further, but the fear went away after all. This was Sasuke, the one she loved.

Moving not-too-quickly, since he was holding himself ready for an attack, Sakura reached out and slid her arms around his waist. He was warm under that jacket, and it was with a piercing joy she would never forget that she tightened her arms and pressed herself against his chest for one, two, beats of the heart which she had kept alive.

"I missed you."

He didn't react, but she'd never expected him to. This had been for her, as much as him, and Sakura felt as if a great weight had lifted off her as she let go, turned, and walked away. She had despised herself for years, for the person she'd once been, for the girl who whined and clung and wanted the world but gave so little in return. There was nothing she could do to unmake Sasuke's past, and she had accepted that she couldn't choose his future, but she could give him a moment's warmth. Let anyone to call that annoying. Head held proudly high, she smiled in the dark and squeezed her eyes shut to rid herself of blinding tears.

And walked right into him.

Startled out of her wits, Sakura flinched back, and Sasuke caught her arm to save her a sudden bath. She could wish to manage a more dignified reaction, but she'd completely failed to detect his movement, and his speed was still far outside her league.

None of that mattered. What was important was that he did not let go, that his free hand curled around her side and he pulled her back against his chest and held her there so tightly she could barely breathe. Uchiha Sasuke had the willpower to stare down the Kyuubi, to defeat Orochimaru. He spent it now in an effort not to cry into her hair.

Had he ever let anyone hold him, that child whose family had been stolen so violently away? His grief had always been as locked away as his fury because there was no-one he would share it with. No nurse, no ANBU member, not even the former Hokage could have won his trust in the aftermath of that brutal betrayal. It felt wrong to be happy while he was hurting so badly. But to lean into his chest and know that she would not be there if he did not trust her was as precious as a thank you. It seemed fair trade that he wasn't paying any attention to just how tightly he was holding her.

The shaking subsided first, and Sasuke's heart stopped pounding so furiously around the time he began to take more even breaths. He really hadn't wept, through all the storm of emotion, and she marvelled at his control. She wasn't sure how long it had lasted, nor if it was minutes or hours after that they simply stood there.

Impossible for it to last forever. He sighed, then seemed to realise how thoroughly he was crushing her and allowed his arms to relax. Looking down, he must have caught some glint of tears, because his fingers brushed her cheek.

"I've never enjoyed hurting you, Sakura." A pause. "Except once or twice when you were being more than usually irritating."

She bit her lip, because it had been so long since Sasuke had remembered he had a sense of humour, and if she tried to laugh she would start crying again. "Would you enjoy being pushed into the water?"

"Not right now." To her deep regret he drew away, and sat down on one side of the dock.

If only it was not so dark, and she could better see his face, could try and gauge if this was temporary reprieve or a change of direction. The nearest light was a pale streetlamp up by the public throughway, and only strong enough to give her an outline of his face, a hint of expression. Tired again, she thought. Terribly tired.

"I meant it about that medical jutsu," he said, as she sat beside him, within reach but not quite touching. "I won't have you doing that for me."

Sakura hid her smile. He would always give orders; it was part of his nature. More often than not she agreed, but not about this.

"I'm one of the best medic nins in the country, Sasuke. Credit me with the judgment to know my limits."

His eyes came up, then he let out his breath. "That takes some getting used to."

"Me being a medic nin?"

"No, you not saying 'Yes, Sasuke-kun' and doing whatever I say."

"I didn't-" She flushed. "I didn't always, anyway."

"No, not always." He lapsed into silence.

Cold lifted off the lake and chilled Sakura from the toes up. She didn't care, just blocked it from her attention and weighed whether he needed chatter or quiet more. She'd happily sit on a block of ice if it would keep Sasuke's mind off hatred.

"How bad is Naruto's seal? Really?" she asked at last, and was sorry her fear was so clear in her voice.

"Not greatly weaker than last I saw him." His tone was a little dry, reminding her that he had told them he didn't care about them, and that he was going to kill Naruto on a whim. She still wasn't certain if that had been entirely pose, or if he were very lost in the darkness that day. "I suspect that key could be used to reinforce it," he added, caught up in the question. "It's not the safest place to keep it, however."

"Did Tsunade-sama tell you about Gaara-kun?"

"Gaara-kun?"

Incredulity. There was so much he didn't know, and it was probably best not to go into how sweet she thought Gaara was. "The Sand are very close allies now," she said, neutrally. "The Akatsuki, they kidnapped Gaara-kun and removed the bijuu sealed inside him, and he would be dead now if Chiiyo...if one of the Sand Elders had not given her life for his. We know they're coming for Naruto soon. He's not allowed out of the village without at least two jounin with him, and there's a growing political tangle about whether it's safe to have him here. Jiraiya-sama kept him on the move before that."

The memorial service was the day after tomorrow, but it was hard to look forward that far. Even though he was willing to sit and talk to her, Sakura knew that Sasuke's hatred was not going to just vanish because she'd been able to help ease a tiny fraction of his hurt. His state of mind was like a pendulum, vacillating wildly between extremes.

"He's been training madly," she said, searching for a balance, a way to slow down the swing. "And now has a jutsu which no-one will let him use because it destroys his own chakra lines."

"Some things don't change."

Sasuke stood up. She shouldn't have spoken, then, should have just enjoyed the silence with him and hoped her presence made it a healing one. But he seemed sad, not angry, and held a hand down to her, saying: "I'll walk you home."

That would take him away from this wretched dock, at least, and the black pit of memories which was the Uchiha Enclave. The warmth of his hand reminded her of the most important things: he was alive, he was here.

Sakura guessed her hand must have felt very cold, because he shrugged off his jacket and put it around her shoulders, which was more than enough to keep her silent for the entire walk home, trying not to read too much into the gesture. Ever since the first day they'd been grouped into Team Seven, when she'd been convinced Sasuke was going to kiss her, and then he turned around and told her she was annoying, she'd never trusted her ability to judge the amount of attraction he felt for her. She was certain he cared, but he cared about Naruto just as strongly. They were his team.

When they reached her apartment, Sasuke glanced disapprovingly from the empty street to the small entrance yard with its high, shadowy walls and said: "You might consider a jounin escort yourself."

"Me?" Sakura was perplexed. "The Akatsuki aren't targeting me."

His expression was an old, familiar one: Sasuke thought she'd said something stupid. "What would Naruto do if someone took you?"

Obvious, of course, and thoroughly dismaying. "Even if they managed to stop him running after me, he'd be so furious at them for not letting him go." The point had already been proved when the masked Akatsuki had taken her to Sasuke.

Now his expression was cooler, almost mocking. "What would I do if someone took you?"

That was unanswerable. He had always protected her in the past, but-

Sasuke leaned forward and murmured directly into her ear. "That's why bonds make you weak."

Damn him. Sakura caught at his shoulder before he could straighten, and glared into shadowed eyes, sick of this intractable conviction that he'd be better off without them.

"Staying away from the people you care about doesn't put them beyond harm. It just means you have no chance at all of protecting them." Then, because she'd had enough of ambiguity as well, she pressed her lips firmly to his.

He jerked back, but didn't quite pull free, and when she broke off he caught her before she could move more than an inch away. Black eyes glowered directly into hers, and then it was his turn. Typical that he hated having the initiative taken away from him, and always had to go one better.

Inordinately pleasing, too, that Sasuke obviously had as much practical knowledge of really kissing someone as she did. That he hesitated when their mouths were together, that he was as tentative as she in deciding what exactly came next. But he'd always been a fast learner.

It truly is possible for all thought to cease, to simply be, and feel, and do. Nothing resembling conscious reasoning disturbed Sakura until the ringing clatter of a falling bottle, and the sound of laughter from the next street reminded her where she was. Sasuke, too, lifted his head as if waking up, and they stared at each other, shocked by themselves.

Taking a shaking breath, Sakura turned her head to one side, and was relieved to find that there was no-one actually watching. Sasuke stayed very still, then backed up slightly, and lowered her to the ground. They hadn't even had the sense to go inside the garden wall.

Her shirt was gaping open, and she clutched the sides together, then looked up as Sasuke put his hands on either side of her face and kissed her again, slowly this time, but very deeply. Then they stood unmoving, both examining this new way of being together.

"I'll see you tomorrow, Sakura," he said at last, voice low, and touched his lips to her temple before turning away.

Cloth brushed her ankle as she moved to watch him, and she said: "Your jacket-" stooping to collect it.

"Keep it."

He kept walking, very upright and steady, but still with the faintest stunned aspect. Sakura straightened and looked down at the jacket, brushing a few grains of sand from the Uchiha crest.

Mine?


	15. Both of Them

15. Both of Them

"Sakura-chan! You were summoned too?" Naruto's blue eyes were wide and frankly worried as they paused before the entrance of the Hokage's building. "Could he have-?"

"I don't think so," Sakura replied, pushing away niggling doubts. Sasuke had told her he would see her today, and one thing he'd never bothered to do was lie.

But for Tsunade-sama to summon them in the middle of breakfast meant there was definitely something up. And much as he obviously desired her, the way they had been together would represent a loss of control to Sasuke, a thing he hated. Sakura had found the...rawness more than a little disturbing herself, the way she'd been so oblivious to anything but touching him. They'd been wide open to attack.

"What do we do if he's gone?" Naruto asked, voice tight.

Sakura gave him a quick, professional survey out of the corner of her eye. Between Jiraiya-sama's death and the Kyuubi's increasing presence, Naruto was struggling to maintain his natural buoyancy. Losing Sasuke again was a blow he did not need.

"We hunt the Akatsuki," she said pragmatically. "And see whether removing the source of the problem works. Just telling him not to hate never will. You can't just stop hating someone, any more than you can stop loving them, and Sasuke-kun hates someone he loves. No matter how much he cares about us, that's not ever going to go away."

"If he does leave again, I vote we go back to the pummel him till he gives in option."

"Works for me." Because if that happened, she really would want to hit him.

With one of his careless knocks, Naruto flung open Tsunade-sama's door, then caught his breath.

Only one person in the room, in the process of fastening a Konoha forehead protector. He glanced over his shoulder at them as he tightened the knot, then nodded. "Naruto. Sakura."

"S-sasuke..." Naruto took a step forward, looking like he didn't trust himself to joy. "You - does this mean you're not an avenger any more?"

"No." The word was flat, accompanied by a frown, but his black eyes softened in face of Naruto's painful confusion. "My father told me, long ago, not to follow after my brother. And I've done nothing else, since." He tilted his head slightly. "Seems to me the best way I can avenge my family is by stopping those bastards from getting their hands on you, frog-boy."

Naruto went still. Konoha's number one hyperactive ninja, prankster, class clown. When he stood like this, very straight, with a faint, crumpled smile and solemn eyes, he was not even recognisable as the same person.

"Welcome home, Sasuke," he said, and held out his hand.

"Glad to be back."

The shadow hadn't gone from Sasuke's eyes. Maybe it never would. But his smile at least touched them as he gripped Naruto's hand, and they stood looking at each other with a sense of balance and rapport Sakura would never have believed possible. Then those black eyes slid in her direction, and he added: "No tears?"

The moment broke. Naruto scrubbed a hand through his hair, blinking and grinning, while Sakura decided perhaps she preferred Sasuke without a sense of humour.

"Ah, I hear Kakashi-sensei!" Naruto said and dashed back out into the corridor. Sakura suspected he was buying himself a moment to recover, because he was close to tears himself, and wasn't quite ready to try out the bear-hug he obviously wanted to give his once-lost friend.

Sasuke turned to Sakura, gaze growing intent as he looked her up and down. Examining her clothing, she realised when he said: "Wear the jacket. I gave it to you for a reason."

She hadn't misinterpreted the gift, then, and felt faintly dizzy before recovering enough to respond. "I wore it to bed." Her lips curled at the corners. "Just the jacket."

It was possible to make Uchiha Sasuke blush, and then of course he was annoyed about it. "You're going to drive me insane, aren't you?"

"Oh, hell, yeah," she said softly, then reached behind him and drew the Haruno circle between his shoulder-blades, meeting his frown with a wicked grin. He caught her hand, but before he could respond there was a soft cough from the door.

"Maybe we should come back later?"

Kakashi-sensei had lifted up his forehead protector in a pretence of surprise, but she could see him smiling beneath his mask. Naruto was outright smirking, and Sakura reached out and took his hand as well as Tsunade-sama came in through the other door.

Turning, she tangled her fingers tightly with theirs and smiled brilliantly at her master.

"Team Seven, reporting for duty."

---

Gratuitously Excessive Author's Notes:

Well, that's the final chapter of "Something I Can Do", having taken it to the point of Team Seven reunion (the most satisfactory point I could aim for, since I wasn't going to try and actually complete the manga's plotline). I seem to have written Sasuke as borderline psychotic, but otherwise I tried to keep within character and the possibilities of the plot as it's laid out. I am very doubtful that this is how all those plotlines will be resolved (there would surely be about forty chapters of fighting included, for a start).

I wrote this fic after re-reading the whole manga end to end, which was a huge mistake just before these weeks of no chapters over the New Year. It was basically my attempt to get the story out of my head so I could concentrate on something, anything else. [I had to put my poor fictionblog character in a coma for the duration. ;; (For those who asked, the only other writing I have on the net is a fictionblog the link of which I don't seem to be able to post here - try googling "Cass Devlin Fallen Out of the World" and you'll probably get something. However, it doesn't in any way resemble the writing style I used for this story, being more an experiment in diary development than anything remotely resembling good writing.

Anyways, thanks for the feedback and the reviews and various nice things said. Reader response is definitely the cherry on the writer's creamy cake. I'm not likely to do any further fanfic in the near future, but will definitely add any to this site should I be struck with the urge again.

-k

Questions and Comments:

- The 'something' Sakura does turned out to be a hell of a lot of different things, not least keeping Sasuke alive in the first place. But I think the one thing which was key was walking away from him on that dock. Sasuke's such a control freak.

- Someone asked earlier, what happened with Itachi. "Back on his leash" is the best I can give you. I've never been able to quite decide how willingly Itachi went to darkness. I think he did get caught up in arrogance, that he suffered a lot from the jealousy of those he constantly surpassed, and that he was a lot nicer to Sasuke than he must have been to anyone else. But at one point he was obviously an incredibly kind person, so I'll stick to my theory that "something got to him" (the Dark Side, presumably).

- Sasuke seems to feel a little (not too much) personal responsibility for Hebi. I imagine he would at least try to find out what happened to Suigetsu and Karin (which should lead to some priceless Sakura/Karin moments). Juugo threatened to take over the plot for a while there – Sakura made a very positive impression on him.

- Sai was going to make an appearance, but was stifled due to potential penis jokes. I can't see Sakura and Naruto wanting to give up this new friend, and would try to keep hold of him somehow. Sasuke will remain unimpressed.

- Pairingwise, I became more fond of Hinata while writing this. I do think she should stop dressing to hide her figure (without necessarily dressing like Ino). So far as I can tell, Naruto simply hasn't noticed she's female. ;) The idea of Hinata feeling for him seemed to prompt a considerable maturation in my version of Naruto, since his response was not simply to feel complimented, but to be uncharacteristically self-doubting and then protective. Does Hinata like ramen? Only time will tell. ;)

- Gosh I like Naruto when he gets all mature. I think of them as 'Minato-moments'.

- SasuSaku is so strong throughout the manga that I would be really shocked and disappointed if it wasn't followed through, but I doubt it will be as quick and easy as this. I think I write Sakura a little stronger than she's usually portrayed – good relationships are best with some kind of equality, so I wanted to establish a pattern of Sakura standing up to Sasuke (and humanising him more as a result). Most of all I wanted to write Sakura as consistently smart, rather than just occasionally being allowed to think. [And, yes, Sasuke seems to consider his coat as an open declaration that Sakura belongs to him. Mine, indeed.

Songbird21: The frog referred to is the key which Jiraiya was carrying around, which he removed and sent to 'store itself in' Naruto just before the Pein battle.

Chapter titles, etc:

Many of the chapter titles were references to songs or other allusions (because, hell, who says fanfic can't be pretentious?). For those trying to remember where you heard it from or trying to figure out what on earth it had to do with the chapter:

Chapter 3: (post-floor smashing)

_ani di franco – Swan Dive_

"That jumping is easy

That falling is fun

Right up until you hit the sidewalk

Shivering and stunned."

Chapter 8: (in many ways this reminds me of the Akatsuki's aims)

_The Second Coming – William Butler Yeats_

"Turning and turning in the widening gyre

The falcon cannot hear the falconer;

Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;

Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,

The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere

The ceremony of innocence is drowned;

The best lack all conviction, while the worst

Are full of passionate intensity.

[..."

Chapter 11: (Tsunade and Sakura chat).

A reference to the proverb of giving a person enough rope to hang himself. I do wonder if Konoha has any ANBU capable of following Sasuke about without him noticing. And how long they kept it up. And if they had a camera... :D

Chapter 13: (Uchiha bonfire)

_Pictures of You – The Cure_

I've been looking so long at these pictures of you

That I almost believe that they're real

I've been living so long with my pictures of you

That I almost believe that the pictures are

All I can feel

Remembering

You standing quiet in the rain

As I ran to your heart to be near

And we kissed as the sky fell in

Holding you close

How I always held close in your fear

Remembering

You running soft through the night

You were bigger and brighter and wider than snow

And screamed at the make-believe

Screamed at the sky

And you finally found all your courage

To let it all go

Remembering

You fallen into my arms

Crying for the death of your heart

You were stone white

So delicate

Lost in the cold

You were always so lost in the dark

Remembering

You how you used to be

Slow drowned

You were angels

So much more than everything

Hold for the last time then slip away quietly

Open my eyes

But I never see anything

If only I'd thought of the right words

I could have held on to your heart

If only I'd thought of the right words

I wouldn't be breaking apart

All my pictures of you

Looking so long at these pictures of you

But I never hold on to your heart

Looking so long for the words to be true

But always just breaking apart

My pictures of you

There was nothing in the world

That I ever wanted more

Than to feel you deep in my heart

There was nothing in the world

That I ever wanted more

Than to never feel the breaking apart

All my pictures of you

Chapter 14: (scene on the dock where Sasuke once learned katons)

_Simon & Garfunkel – The Sound of Silence_

Hello darkness, my old friend

I've come to talk with you again

Because a vision softly creeping

Left its seeds while I was sleeping

And the vision that was planted in my brain

Still remains

Within the sound of silence

---

Thanks for reading.


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